THE COUNTEREXAMPLE

As against this, consider an energy source that is in overample supply, but is not used to any significant extent: wood, which now also goes under the proud name of "biomass."

It is in overample supply in the sense that world primary forest production is some 10 times higher than all of the world's energy consumption. It is soft and fashionable solar energy assimilated via chlorophyl and stored as chemical energy in hydrocarbons. And it does not even suffer from the diluteness of solar energy, because nature, not man, does the collecting.

But while nature, may do the collecting, it is man who must do the transporting, and wood will not flow along pipelines. Even a wood-burning power plant in the forest cannot compete with a minemouth coal-fired plant, because the cutting and transportation of wood is more expensive than the digging and transportation of coal, even over short distances. Once again, the higher energy density (of coal) makes the difference.

Wood is, by and large, used as an energy source mainly in the Third World, where people carry it in stacks on their heads from the nearest forest. But the nearest forest is receding ever farther, for the Schumacherian economies of these countries are too small-is-beautiful to take care of replanting. Hence the price of wood (at the place where it is needed) inexorably rises. Third World countries, not surprisingly, want petroleum and nuclear power, considering the "appropriate technology" preached to them by affluent snobs reading Lovins' treatises by fashionable wood-burning stoves (but by electric light) an affront.

This has been pointed out by Hafele, and in yet another superb essay by Marchetti, from whose paper we have taken the figure below. The curves for the fraction (other than transportation) of the total energy delivered to the final consumer in West Germany are extrapolated beyond 1980 as described in our September issue.

[W. Hafele, W. Sassin, "The Global Energy System," Ann. Review of Energy (Palo Alto, Calif.), 1977. pp. 1-30; Cesare Marchetti, "The Evolution of the Energy System and the Aircraft Industry," Chemical Econ. & Engrg. Review May 1980. See also R.T. Reynolds, "The demography of energy," Amer. Demographics, June 1980, pp.25-31.]